Solve a problem - and create a successful business!!!

As long as consumers have problems, they will always search for solutions. People will always look for better, faster and smarter ways to accomplish everyday tasks.?Fortunately for entrepreneurs, there are still lots of room for improvements in existing products and services. That said, the biggest issue for most founders is finding these painful problems and matching them with the?best solutions possible.

Focus on building a must-have not just a nice to have a product or service.?Consumers are overwhelmed with the paradox of choice on daily basis. Attention spans are getting shorter in the age of multi-tasking and only a few products are getting noticed – with many being a solution for a must not want. The demand for quicker and faster results makes it difficult to fully satisfy the needs of consumers. You need to be doing something different and better to make it in this world, as consumers expect and demand more than just another product.

Solve real painful problems.?Google made search better. Amazon simplified online buying and selling. Netflix solved on-demand streaming media. Uber is trying to make on-demand car service better. What can you make smarter or better?

What is the one painful problem you can solve without struggle? To grab your customer's attention, start by solving their needs, wants rarely make the cut. If your product is not a must-have, you could still find a way to repurpose it to solve a pressing need. If you have been able to identify a crucial problem that you can effectively execute and deliver to the market, you will be able to?create a real business that matters.

Your business should be your passion.?Some successful entrepreneurs look to solve problems they identify with or feel passionate about. They choose this path because work is less about work and more about?enjoying the journey.

You will need all the inspiration, commitment and perseverance you can get to make it as an entrepreneur, hence the need to start a business you are passionate about.

Coupled with passion, is the?ability to execute. If you can't deliver, you are not in business. Products and services with a real need are easy to market and you won't have to convince people about the existence of the problem and the need for your product because they identify with it.

You don't want to start a business that may not survive. Do your homework, validate your idea and make sure you have a real market for your idea. Don't just start another business,?solve a real problem?people actually have to increase your chances of success.

The purpose of a business is to?create a customer, declared?Peter Drucker.?How do you create a customer? You provide something – a service, a product, a solution – (referred to as the Product in the Marketing Mix) they need AND want. In the B2B world, this want and/or need is typically to?solve a business problem.?The bigger the business problem, the more urgent, and the better your offer addresses the more likely and faster you are to create a customer.

What is the problem??Therefore a key part of any business is to be clear about the problem you solve.??Creating a solution before identifying the problem can have devastating consequences. Even if you’re convinced that you have the next best?idea ever; it is a good idea to validate there is a need in the market.

Determine the need for your offer.?It doesn’t always require sophisticated research.?I’ll use my company to illustrate this point.?In 1988 my wife was working as an Accountant for a local school, she was frustrated by having to prepare?Accounting and Payroll manually?and could I find suitable computerised systems. I had designed a simple computerised Cashbook and found a suitable?DOS?based Payroll. This lead me to start selling Payroll systems. Soon found that there was a?demand for a Windows-based Payroll. Designed a Windows Payroll which proved so successful that we?lead the market for about 5 years. Subsequently sold the business for a considerable sum.

Solve problems. The point of the story is, as experienced?marketers, we understood that successful companies?solve problems. For your organisation to?position itself and develop a compelling value proposition, you must be able to clearly articulate the problem and understand how you are better and different from alternatives,?including the alternative of doing nothing.

How Does Your Solution Make a Difference?For us, it was important that we would be able to make a difference. As a member of the leadership team, I imagine that’s important to your company. I truly believe that understanding how you are going to make a difference in the market and create value for your customers is the fundamental question for every business professional. In the words of Richard Branson of Virgin, “ Business people have to think about how their business solution can actually better this world"

Ideas. New ideas, good ideas, and creative ideas are all awesome but to be worthwhile they must be?wanted and needed?by the market. It’s also easy to be lured by a hot trend or the latest cool idea. Your intuition may tell you that your business is wanted and needed but it is nice to have the data to back it up. Market and customer?research are critical to understanding whom your business will serve, the problem you are solving and whether your solution will make a difference. The more you can quantify how your solution will make a difference the better. It is vital you know this before you develop or execute any Marketing.

Key takeaways:?Nourish your company with data. Cultivate an ongoing appetite for customer-focused research. Be able to answer these 6 questions in any conversation with customers, prospects, partners, employees/board members, and influencers about your company:

1. What is the problem in the market you solve?
2. How big is the problem?
3. Who has it?
4. How many people are trying to solve this problem.
5. How well does our solution solve this problem?
6. What is the difference before vs. after they buy our solution? and between our solution and the competition?

Your Mission is Your North Star.?When you know the answers to the above questions, you can proactively frame your mission and value proposition. These two elements serve as the guide for all of your stakeholders and illuminate your business design and strategy.

The mission statement?reflects the problems you solve. Your mission statement which reflects the business problem you solve should dictate every action you take. If it’s been a while since you reviewed your company’s mission statement, now might be a good time for a review. Take a moment to verify you can answer these three key questions:

1. Are we delivering on our mission statement? If so, how well? If not, do we have a new mission?
2. Is our mission statement still relevant to our customers? The market? If not, what problems are we truly solving and how should we revise our mission statement accordingly?
3. Why does our business exist today?

Key takeaway:??Be relevant. Craft mission statements that are customer- and market-centric. This type of work falls directly into the domain of Marketing, Marketing with a capital M. What we often refer to as Upstream Marketing. Without answers to these questions, it will be difficult for any of your Marketing to be effective. Your demand generation programs, which are the downstream part of Marketing,?will face a steep uphill climb.

Solving a Customer Problem is a Daily Mantra. As challenging times return, it is your passion for making a difference and solving a problem that will enable you to survive and maybe even potentially thrive. Thinking about how you make a difference to your customers is something that should be top of mind every day. It will be too late if you’re forced to do if the bottom falls out. Only by staying connected to customers and keeping a pulse on the market and competition?can you continue to provide solutions and services that make a difference.

As a business leader, take these four steps to model the way:

1. Make time to listen to customers. Establish a process for engaging with customers on a consistent and regular basis.
2. Share your learnings with your team.
3. Stay in tune with your industry. Join associations and attend the conferences. Be both a student and a teacher in your discipline.
4. Energise your organisation. Energy and enthusiasm are contagious. As the leader, you set the mood and create the culture. Do you have a culture open to experimentation? Or is it risk-averse? Is your culture oriented toward growth?

As data and measures have become more prolific, the challenge of data-derived decisions and performance management increased. It turns out the ability to derive insights from the ever-expanding universe of data remains a huge challenge. As the Marketing Technology landscape continues to explode and customers remain in more control over the buying process,?process is more important than ever.?As the number of channels expands, the need for strategy and planning escalate.

The market is always changing, and customer problems change. An organisation that keeps learning and growing with its market will always be relevant.

Peter Nathan Introducing Business Owners/Directors/Employees to ARRIA NLG enabling their use of Natural Language Generation (NLG) to achieve Actionable, Accurate and Insightful decisions from all Data Reports.

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